


reintroduction

by Catchup



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Angst, Character Death, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Originally Posted on Tumblr, he's not dead anymore tho so, implied animal death, meant as a metaphor but just in case that rustles ur jimjams
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-06-06
Packaged: 2020-04-11 10:52:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19108186
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catchup/pseuds/Catchup
Summary: it had been a year, and she wasn’t the same girl she had been when he left. / irey meets damian twice, and she doesn't make the same mistake the second time. ramblings after damian's death, revival, and the time between.





	reintroduction

     Her robin had died.

     She remembered the day her father had introduced them, Batman towering, tall and stoic, his hand on his hatchling’s shoulder. He was ten, and she was eleven, standing inches his senior with pigtails tight on her head. She had tried; Wally had told her to be _good_ , that he wasn’t _used_  to having his own Flash - and she had behaved.

     “It’s meant to be,” she had said, a wide grin on her face, bending at the waist a few inches to look him in the eye. “My dad had a Robin, my cousin had a Robin - we’re meant to be friends, you know? I’m Irey, and it’s nice -”

     She had extended her hand, a touch too fast, too eager. Her only response was the slap of skin hitting skin, smacking her hand away, shoulders tight and square to himself.

     “Keep your hands to yourself,” he had spat. 

 

     He had cut off her attempts at friendship from day one. Maybe it wasn’t fate. Maybe they weren’t meant to be _anything_  - friends, rivals, teammates. They argued and traded blows more than even her and her own twin, their ways of being so incredibly different that it caused nothing but chaos in it’s path. She tried to reach out, and he would do everything he could to stay one step ahead, keeping her at bay.

     And then he died, and the silence that followed their constant static was almost unbearable.

     Bruce had held a private ceremony, and they had to respect that, Wally had said. But even he wasn’t himself afterwards, watching a family lose a child, Dick lose his brother, the league lose a bird who had barely learned to fly.

     She ruined his room in the tower, throwing _stupid_  encyclopedias around and spilling the closet of clothes to the floor, a tornado in a tiny bedroom. Nothing was untouched, much like how she felt when he left.

     He had left her, and ruined _everything_. He was suppose to be her _robin_ , her counterweight. The thirteen-year-old didn’t understand how someone so _vicious_  and _rabid_  could hurt her, how it felt like she had been thrown into the windstorm to sink herself. 

      She didn’t cry. She didn’t cry for weeks, until the winter turned into spring and she found a fledgling outside of her house, the baby Cardinal having fallen out of it’s nest. Only then did she cry, helping her father place it in a small box in the back yard. She didn’t stop crying for days.

     What was she suppose to do without a Robin?

 

      He returned. When his sweatshirts were threadbare and almost a size too small, the teenage girl several sizes different than the child who had worn them originally, he returned. When she had finally ditched her pigtails for braids, still flirting with the idea of cutting her hair off entirely, he returned, and it was like ripping a band-aid off of an open wound.

     Everyone had healed. Not completely, and not without help, without the aid of stitches and false facades of being _okay_ , but they weren’t the broken, shattered pieces they were when he died. The baby bird that had fallen out of the Cardinal’s nest at her home had been buried for over a year now, and it had been ... it had been months since she had sat outside at it’s grave, the tiny rocks she had used to mark it’s place in the yard almost overgrown. 

     He returned. But he had missed _so much_. He had missed their coping, their tears, the titans reforming under Mar’i, broken and _wrong_  but _trying_. He returned, and it was then she realized she had seen over a year without her counterpart, without his snark and wit and _hatred_. She had survived, somehow, and moved forward, no matter how often she looked back for him. No matter how often she sat in her yard and talked to the bird she’d lost.

     It had been a year, and she wasn’t the same girl she had been when he left, dependent and loud and overwhelming. It had been a year, and she had grown a few more inches, gotten promoted from Kid Flash to Impulse, an in-between title. Not a sidekick, not a hero. It had been a year, and she still had those _damned_  pigtails.

     She cut off thirteen inches of her hair before she went and saw him, her hair barely curling on her collar, unruly in ringlets. It took years for skin to regenerate and for a scar to fade, and she wondered if the thirteen inches were enough to remove the year of loss, and the time right before, from her being. Maybe she could start over. Maybe _they_  could start over.

     “Hey,” she had started, wearing the navy sweatshirt with the obnoxious smiley face on it - one of his undercover garments, something he _hated_ and she had _kept. H_ e had returned, paler and gaunt, sickly and off and _wrong_ , but he was here. “I don’t think we were introduced very well the first time. I’m Irey,” she said, reaching out, slow and deliberate. “And - and I missed you _so much_.”

     He had paused, eyes strange, unreadable, _different. B_ ut slowly - hesitantly - his palm met hers, cautious, and he squeezed.

     Her Robin was back, and neither of them were the same.


End file.
